~ (sorry, no balloons)

International Women’s day, Women’s History Month & a Fembruary round-up

Greetings all & welcome – happy International Women’s Day to you all. This post is a bit unusual for me – nothing new painted, and it is (mostly) presenting the work of other people. Today I am summarising and collating the various pics of work that many excellent hobbyists contributed to a little challenge idea that I called ‘Fembruary’. Just for fun, I am also going choose my personal favourite Fembruary entry, and award it a virtual award of high-fives and ‘we are not worthy’ kudos – the artistry shown in the winning entry is (in my opinion) quite stunning! But before that, let’s recap on what Fembruary is all about.

So, first off, for those not involved in the wargaming/wargame modelling hobby, an explanation on the whole month thing. There are quite a few themed months within the community, so ‘Orctober’ (paint Orcs/Orks), ‘Deadcember’ (paint undead), and ‘Slaanuary’ (paint – you guessed it – Slaan), are all things… and there are many more beside!

Second thing to bear in mind – wargamming is a very male-dominated hobby, with most of the sculptors and designers being of the male variety, so small surprise that quite a lot of the portrayals of femininity in the hobby are (at best) unrealistic, and (at worst) blatantly and unnecessarily sexualised. This is probably more noticable for older minis, but I think it is telling that even GW’s latest releases for the Daughters of Khaine and the recent Escher reboot can’t seem to dress themselves fully… Ok, so I guess they all have to be lithe and graceful ‘because Elves’, or ‘because dystopian warrior-women’, but surely, we should’ve moved beyond ‘battle bikinis’ by now? FFS, even the half-snake/half-elves in the new DoK have war-bras on… I’m not trying to be puritanical in making this point – empowered and informed clothing choices are A-OK in my book, but let’s at least ask ourselves why these minis are dressed as they are. Is this a deliberate design choice that is intended to entice empowered women to the hobby? If not, then who are these design choices actually aimed at? Most importantly, was there a different way that the talented designers at GW could have articulated their vision for these factions? More questions arise when we look at the backgrounds – vengeful & killy she-Elves, (Daughters of Khaine), or drug-crazed man haters (Escher)… Hmmm… not exactly breaking the mould here are they

This February thing is therefore about getting a conversation going about how women are presented within our hobby – asking questions, and challenging some assumptions. It also becomes a celebration of the growing movement and taste for more plausible representations of females in the hobby, whether by design, or converted.

Right… I think that sets the scene, so let’s look at some pics shall we?! Huge thanks to everyone who took part & contributed. I counted 9 10 bloggers who got on board – I may have missed some supporters or pics, but please don’t be offended if I missed anything – this curating malarkey is tricky!! All the pictures here are totally stolen, but are credited & links provided to the appropriate blog where possible. So, in no particular order:

Argent Badger @ The Bovine Overlord completed Hannah, Chief Freikorps Archivist for Malifaux, and dedicated her to Fembruary. I’m not hugely familiar with the Malifaux line, but I do love a bit of Steampunk, and Hannah rocks it (literaly) in this hulking battle suit!

Huge apologies to Argent Badger btw – I missed this out of the original post, but edited it in once I had it pointed out to me (told you curating was tricky!)

Mark @ Heresy of us gave us this utterly gorgeous paint job on a classic JB ‘Femme Militants’ figure. The whites/off-whites and shading are beautifully rendered – no surprises there – Mark has a wonderfully painterly style, and he certainly doesn’t dissapoint here.

Azazel @ Azazel’s bitz box really went to town with 5 minis – and covers 4 ‘races’ to boot! (ok, the Nurgle Daemons are stretching it a little Az, but hey, who am I to judge!) There is some brilliant work here, but just look at that Dwarven Queen – outstanding!

Man of Tin really got stuck in – I know the Land Army gals are painted by him, but I’m not sure about the others (collected? Painted?), and there are more on his blog. I should probably note that MoT works in a part of the hobby that I’m not familiar with, so I may not be doing his stuff justice, but it’s great to see Fembruary spreading beyond my immediate circle! Man of Tin & Heart of Gold.

Thomas @ High Times on the Eastern Fringe gave us Trung Gozen, Archon of the Kabal of Infinite Sorrow. By his own admission, Thomas was outside his comfort zone with the face on this mini, (he usually paints brutes, monsters, and power armour!), but I love it! She is wild, savage, and definitely in charge – perfect!

Wugugast @ Convert or die gave us two trademark figures – I love how Wudugast deals with black, and the way he gets a really cool desaturated look to his minis for an almost fairy-tale quality… It’s quite a Scandie look, and must be a special quality of that cold Scottish light 🙂

Speaking of fairy-tale quality, the eponymous Imperial Rebel Ork has produced a beautiful diorama for Fembruary, as well as one of his more trademark conversions, (wonderfully bonkers). Unusually for IRO, the diorama was inspired by the art in a graphic novel called ‘The girl from the other side’, and really is special for its departure from a ‘normal’ figure painting approach.

Inchmurrin, (sorry, don’t know the blog site), gave us ‘Rachel’, a no-nonsense exo armoured conversion – she’s really cool, and certainly looks ready to put in a heavy shift at the coalface!

Mikeland82 @ of the Starship Vorenus has knocked the ball out of the park, and given us a whole Escher gang! They have a beautifully vibrant and coherent colour scheme, and we got an excellent female soldier (WW2?) as a bonus as well!

Kraut Scientist @ The Eternal Hunt converted and painted this stunning Inquisitor for us – Krauty is one of the best converters out there, and I am a huge fan of how he handles red in particular, (no doubt refined through years of worshiping the Blood God!). This is a beautiful example of his work.

Finally, my own humble submission is a 5-strong gang of post-apocalyptic ladies – I have focussed on creating as diverse a group as possible here, while still hopefully keeping a coherent look to the gang.

Phew, how cool is that! What a superb and diverse collection – I hope you enjoyed the round-up! Now, I did say that I would pick out my favourite of the bunch… Tough task, because there are some superb projects in this lot, but I have to say that IRO’s ‘The girl from the other side’ diorama takes the cake for me. I love the monochrome ‘drawn’ style that IRO has used here, and the narrative is brilliant. This girl is strong – that looming presence behind her is supporting and protective, but she’s clearly the one in charge as she fearlessly walks through the darkness. The sheer uniqueness of this work is really appealing… it is just so atmospheric!

Anyhow, that’s all folks! Well done IRO – virtual high-fives and kudos to you dude 🙂 Thank you again to all those who contributed – I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did, and thanks as well to those stopping by for a look. Do feel free to drop a comment below, vote your favourite, etc. 🙂

Oh wow I’m both shocked and humbled. Kind of speechless too, a rare thing for me.

* cough… onto the other entries

Absolutely brilliant work from everyone. It’s good to see it all on one post so thanks for that Alex. Good to see no tiny bikinis either hehe. It was a really fun challenge and I tried to challenge myself with what I put out. High fives back at you brother!

Great round-up, and well done to all of the people who participated! I’ll have to get an empowered tiny battle bikini into next year’s edition (by letting Marouda choose one) just to be an annoying contrarian.
if you’re up for editing the post, The Bovine Overlord posted this model “Hannah” recently as part of Fembruary and the Neglected Model Challengehttps://thebovineoverlord.wordpress.com/2018/03/02/painted-hannah/

Thanks for the roundup! Some fantastic pieces alright — the diorama is rather lovely!

And thank you for the shout out: It was actually this challenge that led me to finally paint that female Interrogator for an Ordo Hereticus warband that I had left unpainted for years at this point, and that I’ve now been blazing through model after model — and I have your challenge to thank for that!

I’m a bit torn regarding the Daughters of Khaine. I fully agree with you regarding the the Battle Bikinis. That’s just stupid but so are the dog collars and leather straps on the Blood reavers. Still, it’s not hard to dress more proper.

But when it comes to rules and background they’ve broken the mold. Daughters of Khaine are essentially female Berzerkers. They’ll destroy you by force and power rather than guile, magic or arrows (what female elves mostly seem to use).

I’m blown away by the response too – some great stuff for sure 🙂
Yeah, you’re right – DoK aren’t the only underdressed minis out there & there are plenty of Conanesque blokes in circulation for sure… not sure that the hobby objectifies men in the same way though, or whether that objectification is as loaded… ?
Good point re. the background – I hadn’t thought of it that way – cheers mate!

You are absolutely right about the difference between how female and male bodies are perceived and in that how objectification works. It is in the end just lazy design make all but nude female models. But with all their faults the sculpts are still very good when it comes to posing. Sure they wear battle bikinis but they aren’t doing sexy posing like Toughest girl in Galaxy minis. They are in full battle stride which takes focus from the lack of clothes and help de-objectify them. They come into their own in a sense.

I know the common line on “objectification” is that barely-dressed muscular men = men’s power fantasy but barely dressed muscular women = men’s sexytime fantasy. Now sometimes that is true, but a lot of the time it isn’t.

What it comes down to is that too many people – men and women both – think they have a stake in how (other) women can or “should” or “should not” dress and that their opinions count for anything at all.

There was a time when bathing suits were required to be neck-to-knee to protect women’s modesty. I was out all day today, and it was pretty hot (33C). There were plenty of women out and about, wearing far less than the old neck-to-knee, and they didn’t appear to be doing it for my benefit.

Amusingly, the video for Christina Aguilera’s “Dirty” just came on the Music video channel on the TV next to me. A lotta half-naked people in that one. Ladies and gents both. Who is there for who’s visual stimulation? Who’s in charge?

Totally agree mate – people’s choices should be respected and upheld without doubt or exception IMO. My questioning this specific case is that we are talkign about a product designed for a market rather than a personal clothing choice for individual.

I do have a broader issue when folks feel coerced or pressured to look or dress in a specific way. Product & product design – including pop videos, can (arguably) form part of that pressure. Granted, our nerdy hobby is unlikely to exert much pressure in that regard, but I see it as part of the same discussion 🙂

Thanks for putting the Challenge out there and showcasing people’s work. It’s really nice to see what people contributed. I had seen a number of them on the blogs I follow, but there were a few others that I had originally missed. Great stuff and hopefully there will be even more next Fembruary! 😀

Great post. Some fab examples there! And I totally agree with your fave, IRO really knocked it out of the park with that, totally on brief, original and different. Great work all. Thanks for the post Alex.